An Interlude
by Leca B
Summary: Sometime between night and dawn, Harry and Ginny find each other again.


I got hit in the feels with Harry and Ginny recently. I had honestly forgotten how much I loved them. Delving back into this crazy fandom is so nostalgic, I feel sixteen again. Though hopefully my writing has improved since then. Here's a pointless piece of post-war fluff for you.

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Harry wakes with the movement of the mattress as a new body climbs into bed with him. He's not wearing his glasses and is still very groggy, too groggy to even be startled. He doesn't know what time it is, but it's near enough dawn that he can make out the shock of long red hair that accompanies the intruder and it's enough. He lets her crawl under the blanket with him and press her back to his chest, wraps an arm around her and exhaustion tugs him right back to sleep.

He doesn't dream at all. There are no nightmares, no unwanted vision from his enemy, not even the normal pantomime of common, non-prophetic dreams. It feels like he falls asleep in one second and is awake the next. He is still tired, it feels like he's barely slept at all, body aches with bumps and bruises and a deeper, diffuse pain that's settled somewhere between his muscles and his bones sometime in February and hasn't ever let up. There's a new one too, dull throbbing coming from his chest, and he wonders if there's another – bigger – lightning scar marring his skin. He takes comfort in the fact that this one was easier to hide than the one smack dab in the middle of his forehead.

The day has dawned while he slept, and the timid sun bathes the room in soft pale light. It peeks in through the cracks in his bed's curtains and gives the figure still nestled against him some more definition. There is no one else who would think to crawl into his bed in Gryffindor tower, but even without that thought, without his glasses, he would know Ginny anywhere. His heart picks up in his chest and with a sudden, sharp intake of air, he's wide awake.

He kept his distance yesterday, hadn't wanted to intrude, still felt too much like all the death and destruction were his fault to offer her condolences – or ask for comfort. He'd let her mourn surrounded by her family and hid behind an ever growing list of bodies to find, families to call, and death eaters to catch. He'd figured it wasn't the right time, she needed space and time, and there would be opportunity to talk later.

(He figured she might not want him anymore, after he broke things off, after he brought her family so much grief)

After all those months apart, missing her something fierce, staring at her dot on the map to make sure she was alive, wondering if she was thinking about him, if she still cared as much as he did… And then last night, finding out all she'd done for the resistance while he was away, all the pain she'd gone through, watching her crawl through the portrait hole ready to fight and being absolutely terrified, seeing Bellatrix's spell come a hair's breadth of hitting her, he thought his heart would jump right off his chest. Going to the forest and thinking " _I will never see her again_ ".

Relief floods him like a wave, knocking him off his feet and squeezing his throat shut because, God. He'd thought he'd never see her again. This is almost too good to be true. He reaches forward and pulls her closer, buries his face in her hair and takes deep, calming breaths, trying to concentrate on that familiar scent of flowers instead of the newly overwhelming notion that he has a future. And he _is_ grieving the unfair number of people he's lost, he is, but somehow he's lived through his war, and so has she, and he can't believe he's this lucky.

"I'm so glad you're alive," he breathes out against her hair.

She turns around so quickly it startles him, and he pulls his arms back like he's been burned. He hadn't realized she had woken up, was too caught up in his own head.

Her face is blurry. He wants to reach out for his glasses so he can see her brown eyes and the smattering of freckles across her nose and that curl to her lips that let him know she was amused. But she hasn't said anything yet, and it's the first time in months he's had her this close and he doesn't want it to end. They look at each other in silence, lying on their sides, nose to nose, for what may be minutes or hours, and it feels like a long lost day back in sixth year, when they lay in the sun by the lake in each other's arms, ignoring the looming war and the growing numbers of dead and missing, just reveling in a castle that was still safe, and a love that was still new.

It feels like a lifetime since she'd kissed him on his birthday.

And now he has an entire lifetime to spend kissing her.

His eyesight is terrible, but he can see the contours of what's probably a smile curl her lips, and she raises her hand to run soft fingertips across his face, tracing his features like she's trying to relearn them. He takes this as permission to pull her closer again, and it's very cliché, but this feels like coming home.

Ginny is the one to finally break the silence, and it carries all the residual grief and apprehension that linger in both their hearts when she breathes out, "I thought I'd lost you."

He swallows down the lump in his throat the memory of an empty train station bathed in white light brings, and admits, "For a while there… I think you did."

She doesn't gasp or burst into tears, and he's reminded once again that he is lucky enough to have someone so strong in his life. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, calming herself before the panic could set in, and when she talks again, there's no trembling. "How?"

He's mumbled an abridged version to Kingsley sometime between the 2 am dead body hunt and the 3 am debris removal party, and he knows he'll hold back a lot of the gory details from the Weasleys, when they inevitably ask him. He also knows he will be forced to write a novel length report for the Ministry detailing the crusade his would-be seventh year had turned into, and he is not particularly thrilled. But he realizes with startling clarity that he wants to tell Ginny. He wants to tell her everything, wants to answer her every question, wants to explain his reasons for going, for leaving her behind, wants to tell her he'd missed her like he'd left a piece of him at the Burrow, wants to apologize and hear all about she had done while he was away. Because this is Ginny, and Ginny listens, and most all, she understands.

But not now. He's still too tired, still aching and confused, still reeling over all the people they lost and how damaged the castle that was his first real home had ended up. Still entirely bewildered that this war is over, that Voldemort is truly gone and for the first time in years Harry's thoughts and dreams are entirely his own.

"Later," he tells her, "I promise I will tell you everything later. We have time," he says, and it fills his heart with warmth.

Ginny grins at him, one of her full open, radiant smiles, and he knows she feels the same. "We really do, don't we?"

Her hand moves back to rest on his nape, fingers curling gently around the short hair and caressing. His thumb inches up under her shirt to draw circles against the warm skin of her waist and they just smile to each other, choosing to forget for a second all the destruction and loss waiting outside the curtains of his dorm's bed.

They had time.

And when she leans in to kiss him it feels like those several sunlit days they'd been robbed of last year. It feels like an apology, and a statement, and a promise of a future they hadn't thought they might have – almost didn't get.

And it doesn't feel like a happy ending. It feels like beginning.


End file.
